Modern Peru

Peru's recent political history has been a turbulent mix of military dictatorships, coups d'état, and several disastrous civilian governments, engendering a near-continual cycle of instability. Particularly in the 1980s and 1990s, Peru became notorious for government corruption at the highest levels -- leading to the exile of two recent presidents -- and widespread domestic terrorism fears.

Peru shook off the mantle of 2 decades of dictatorship in 1945 after a free election (the first in many decades) of José Luis Bustamante y Rivero. Bustamante served for just 3 years. General Manuel A. Odría led a coup and installed a military regime in 1948. In 1963, Peru returned to civilian rule, with Fernando Belaúnde Terry as president. The armed forces overthrew Belaúnde in 1968, but the new military regime (contrary to other right-leaning dictatorships in Latin America) expanded the role of the state, nationalized a number of industries, and instituted agrarian reform. The land-reform initiatives failed miserably. Re-elected in 1980, Belaúnde and his successor, Alan García (1985-90), faced, and were largely unsuccessful in dealing with, hyperinflation, nationwide strikes, and two homegrown guerrilla movements -- the Maoist Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) and the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA) -- that destabilized Peru with violent terror campaigns throughout the late 1980s and early '90s. Meanwhile, Peru's role on the production end of the international cocaine trade grew exponentially.

García, who made a point of refusing to pay Peru's external debt (which prompted both the IMF and World Bank to cut off support), fled into exile after being charged with embezzling millions. With the economy in ruins and the government in chaos, Alberto Fujimori, the son of Japanese immigrants, defeated the Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa and became president in 1990. Fujimori campaigned on promises to fix the ailing economy and root out terrorist guerrillas, and in 1992, his government succeeded in arresting key members of both the MRTA and the Shining Path (catapulting the president to unprecedented popularity). Fujimori suddenly became authoritarian, however, shutting down Congress in 1992, suspending the constitution, and decreeing an emergency government that he effectively ruled as dictator. His austerity measures got Peru on the right track economically, though, with reforms leading to widespread privatizations, growth of 7%, and a drop in inflation from more than 10,000% annually to about 20%, so many Peruvians were reluctantly accepting of Fujimori's distaste for democracy.

Fujimori pushed to get the constitution amended so that he could run for successive terms, and he was re-elected in 1995, soundly defeating former United Nations Secretary General Javier Pérez de Cuellar. That same year, Peru briefly entered into armed conflict with Ecuador over the decades-old border dispute, though in 1999 Ecuador finally accepted the Rio de Janeiro treaty and the borders as established in 1942.

Most international observers denounced the announced 2000 presidential election results after Fujimori's controversial run-off with Alejandro Toledo, a newcomer from a poor Indian family. Public outcry forced Fujimori to call new elections, but he escaped into exile in Japan and resigned the presidency in late 2000 after a corruption scandal involving his shadowy intelligence chief, Vladimiro Montesinos. Videotape of Montesinos bribing a congressman and subsequent investigations (including a daily barrage of secret videotapes broadcast on national television) revealed a government so thoroughly corrupt that it was itself involved in the narcotics trade that it was ostensibly stamping out. Fujimori, currently living in Peru and fighting against extradition, was discovered to have funneled at least $12 million to private offshore accounts. Montesinos escaped to Venezuela, where he was harbored by the government until he was found and returned to Peru for imprisonment. Fujimori is also accused of ordering the murder of 25 suspected Shining Path guerrillas by death squad.

Toledo, who most observers believe would have won the 2000 election, ran again in 2001 and, amazingly, entered into a run-off with Alan García, who -- though disgraced only a few years earlier -- had dared to return from exile to run for the presidency. Toledo, a former shoeshine boy who went on to teach at Harvard and become a World Bank economist, won the election and became Peru's first president of the 21st century in July 2001, formally accepting the post at Machu Picchu. Also in 2001, the U.S. State Department Human Rights Report named Peru among the success stories of the year, praising the country for meeting international standards for free elections and addressing past abuses and corruption under the Fujimori administration.

Now at the end of Toledo's presidency, his once hopeful program Perú Posible has not remotely achieved the results Peruvians were hoping for. Instead, there is renewed crisis across Peru. Toledo's campaign promises have gone unfulfilled, government corruption and nepotism are still epidemic, and farmers and teachers on strike paralyzed Peru and prompted Toledo to declare a state of emergency. The president has been embroiled in personal scandal, revealing cocaine use in the late 1990s and an illegitimate teenage daughter from whom he is estranged. In 2003 alone, Toledo twice overhauled his cabinet and fired two prime ministers, including the first woman named to that post. There are fears that peasant uprisings in neighboring Bolivia, triggered in part by U.S. military efforts to eradicate coca growing, could easily spread to Peru. Bolivia's resounding election of the leftist Evo Morales, who has promised to nationalize energy concerns and legalize coca farming, speaks to a growing influence of disenfranchised Amerindian populations in Andean countries, and many observers wonder what this projects for Peru's uncertain political future. For the last years of Toledo's presidency, his approval rating has hovered just above single digits; as a number of opposition politicians called for his resignation, Toledo limped to the end of his term in 2006.

Peru Today

Peru, the third largest country in South America (after Brazil and Argentina), is vastly undervalued as a travel destination. It receives, in its best year, only a million or so visitors. But with spectacular Andes mountains and highland culture, a section of Amazon rainforest second only to Brazil, one of the richest arrays of wildlife in the world, and some of the Americas' greatest ruins of pre-Columbian cultures, Peru deserves to be experienced by so many more people.

Most know it only as the land of the Incas, symbolized by the mysteries of Machu Picchu, the famous lost city tucked high in the Andes. Yet Peru is littered with archaeological discoveries of many civilizations, from one end to another, highland to coast. Just over a decade ago, a National Geographic team discovered Juanita the Ice Maiden, an Inca princess sacrificed on Mount Ampato more than 500 years ago. (Her frozen corpse is now exhibited in Arequipa.) Archaeologists have recently unearthed more than 2,000 extraordinarily well-preserved mummies from one of Peru's largest Inca burial sites, which was found under a shantytown on the outskirts of Lima. Other sites continue to be excavated; many visitors will be shocked to find bits of ancient textiles fluttering around recently opened burial tombs that may be 1,500 years old. Researchers are now calling Caral, a site in central Peru north of Lima, the oldest city in the Americas. It is believed to date to 2600 B.C., part of a sophisticated society contemporaneous with the Egyptian pyramids.

Peru is rich in artifacts and culture, but it remains very poor and is still a society thoroughly dominated by elites. More than half the population lives at or below the poverty line. The horrendous violence of the late 1980s and early '90s has now almost completely abated, and there are no areas where visitors should not feel welcome. Though the country is beset with economic difficulties, it appears to be entering a more hopeful period. The election of Alejandro Toledo in 2001 followed a disastrous period of sustained political crisis of corruption and scandal. Toledo hoped to turn Peru around by attracting new foreign investment, tripling tourism receipts, and creating a million new jobs. The economy has grown at a rate of 3% to 4% a year, but much of that growth has been stimulated by foreign investment in the mining sector, from which very few Peruvians benefit. Toledo's administration, beset by instability, abuse of power, poor management, lack of credibility, and continuing scandal, has failed to deliver on any of its grand campaign promises. Indeed, the government is so widely perceived as a failure that few Peruvians and international observers expect Toledo's presidency to survive to the end of his 5-year term in 2006.

The current reality is a sad one for Peru. Toledo labeled himself an "Indian rebel with a cause," alluding to his intent to recognize and support the nation's native Andean populations, or cholos. When he was elected, Toledo offered an encouraging symbol of hope to both Peruvians and the international community: The story of a shoeshine boy and son of peasants who goes on to Harvard and Stanford and ultimately wrestles the top office from a corrupt leader is the very embodiment of the dream of social mobility. Whether any other impoverished Peruvians will be as fortunate as their now-discredited president remains as unlikely as ever, and the country's democracy also remains fragile, especially given the instabilities of the past couple years in neighboring Andean countries like Ecuador and Bolivia.

Former president Alberto Fujimori, who fled the country to live in exile in Japan, was arrested in Chile in November 2005 attempting to return to Peru in a surprise bid to run for president. Peruvian authorities have requested his extradition, adding further intrigue to an uncertain situation.

Peru's most recent presidential election was in April 2006, with runoff results in June 2006 announcing the victor as former president Alan García. He'll be sworn in on July 18, 2006, roughly 16 years after his first presidency -- one marked by widespread guerilla violence and economic ruin -- ended.

Terrorism in Peru

The unprecedented waves of violence that rocked Peru in the late 1980s and early 1990s were a result not of cocaine drug trafficking but the terrorist activities of two small but highly effective homegrown insurgency groups and militaristic response by the government to root them out. Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) and MRTA (Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement) waged a two-decade guerrilla war against the Peruvian state, killing more than 30,000 people and creating a climate of fear across the country.

The best known and largest of the two principal insurgency networks was Sendero Luminoso, a Maoist terrorist group formed in the late 1960s by a university professor, Abimael Guzmán. Sendero Luminoso sought to overthrow the Peruvian state by sowing terror as a means to destabilizing its institutions. Sendero's aim was to restructure Peru along the lines of a peasant revolutionary regime and institute an Amerindian socialist system. Sendero Luminoso tried to create a rural-based insurgency, appropriating key elements of Indian heritage rather than political ideology to win support. However, rural campesinos were the most numerous victims of their violent campaign.

During its heyday, Sendero Luminoso was considered one of the most violent terrorist organizations in the world. Although based in the rural area around Ayacucho, by the late 1980s, Shining Path had become very active in urban areas, bombing institutions -- from courthouses to diplomatic missions (including the U.S. embassy) -- and carrying out selective assassinations. At its height, Sendero Luminoso was thought to have about 2,000 armed militants and a significant base of support, particularly in rural areas

The government's efforts to identify and destroy the Shining Path were often just as ruthless as those of the terrorists. As many as half of the terrorism-related deaths are estimated by human rights organizations to have come at the hands of the police and special forces. Alberto Fujimori ran for the presidency in 1990 in part on a campaign to eradicate the terrorist network. As president, he won a provision for emergency rule, which resulted in the capture of what the government claimed was 2,500 Sendero Luminoso terrorists. The capture of Guzmán (aka Comrade Gonzalo), the brains and spiritual heart of the operation, in September 1992 struck a mortal blow to Sendero Luminoso. Other leaders were arrested in 1995; defections and an amnesty program further weakened the group. Guzmán himself requested a peace accord from prison, where he remains, in 1995.

The Marxist-Leninist Movimiento Revolucionario Tupac Amaru, known by its Spanish-language acronym MRTA, was the smaller of the two terrorist organizations active in Peru. It formed in 1984, taking the name of an Indian who led a rebellion against Spanish colonizers in the 18th century. It hoped to establish a Marxist regime and rid Peru of imperialist influences. In 1987, it launched a campaign of armed struggle against the government of Alan García. For most of its existence, the MRTA was much less violent and less organized than the Sendero Luminoso. It orchestrated several attention-getting episodes, such as prison escapes, takeovers of foreign press offices, and stealing from supermarkets and distributing free food in poor neighborhoods, although it was also responsible for a few dozen killings, bombings, and kidnappings.

Before a majority of the organization's militants was imprisoned, the MRTA was estimated to have between 300 and 600 members and to have operated principally in the northern Amazon region. The MRTA twice captured international attention. In December 1996, an MRTA group seized the residence of the Japanese ambassador in Lima during a diplomatic reception, capturing 490 hostages. The group released many but held 72 hostages -- including the brother of President Fujimori, Peru's foreign minister, supreme court judges, members of congress, and the ambassadors of Japan and Bolivia -- for 4 months, until April 1997, when Fujimori ordered a violent raid on the embassy compound by Peruvian special forces. The dramatic raid freed the remaining hostages (although one died of heart failure) and killed all 14 MRTA militants, including the group's leader.

The other episode that catapulted the MRTA into the international spotlight was the arrest of a 26-year-old U.S. citizen, Lori Berenson. A freelance journalist, Berenson was accused by the government of being a sympathizer and collaborator of the MRTA and charged with helping to organize a plan to take over congress. Berenson and her supporters claimed she was unaware that she was sharing a Lima house with MRTA militants and the bounty of guns and explosives they had hidden there. Convicted of treason in 1996 by a special military court of hooded judges and sentenced to life in prison, Berenson's term was later reduced to 20 years. An appeal for her release was denied in 2001, and she remains in prison today. Many organizations in the United States, who view Berenson not as a terrorist but as a human rights activist, continue to try to win her release, citing a wealth of nonstandard practices in her arrest and subsequent trials. For more information on Berenson (from her supporters' perspective), see www.freelori.org.

Although the large-scale terrorist activities of Sendero Luminoso and MRTA were effectively stamped out in the early 1990s, in recent years there have been growing concerns about a possible resurgence of those groups (especially after a car bomb outside the U.S. embassy in Lima in 2002 killed 10 people and 71 hostages were taken near a remote southern pipeline in 2003). In December 2005, President Toledo declared a state of emergency in six central Amazon provinces after Shining Path guerrillas killed eight policemen in the remote Huanaco region -- upping the total to 19 police and military officers assassinated in 2005 and again raising the specter of renewed violence across Peru.

While it remains a situation worth watching, to date the most populous (and traveled) regions of Peru have not been affected, and neither group is currently active in any of the areas covered in this guide. Sendero founder Abimael Guzmán continues to serve a life sentence in a federal penitentiary, and the organizations have been pushed deep into remote coca-growing regions of the Amazon jungle. Sendero Luminoso now largely follows the allure of narcotics trafficking rather than Maoist ideology, and the group's public battle has shifted from the streets to the courts, with supporters mounting political and legal challenges to the imprisonment of convicted group members and activists. A Peruvian court ruled in 2003 that large sections of the country's anti-terrorist statutes were unconstitutional, prompting fears that lawyers for the groups would immediately seek the release of some 1,200 "political" prisoners. President Toledo assured Peruvians that terrorist ringleaders would never be released from prison.